


Panic, Fright, and Malachite

by Ceil



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Everyone Has Issues, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Fluff, Healing, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Mental Health Issues, Musical References, Musicals, Panic Attacks, Protective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23634073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceil/pseuds/Ceil
Summary: Delia has a panic attack and gets some help from:(1) her strange and unusual (and empathetic) stepdaughter, (2) her very loving, very concerned husband, (3) a certain rat-faced demon from hell who cares *WAY* more than he lets on, and (4) two kind, albeit vanilla, ghosts Delia would never ever evict, even if she could…and each and every one of them has a surprising history with these sorta fearful panic attack things. Who knew?(TRIGGER WARNING FOR PAST ABUSE MENTIONS and obviously panic attack descriptions.)
Relationships: Adam Maitland & Original Character(s), Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Charles Deetz & Delia Deetz & Lydia Deetz & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Delia Deetz, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Charles Deetz & Delia Deetz, Charles Deetz & Delia Deetz & Lydia Deetz & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Charles Deetz/Delia Deetz, Delia Deetz & Adam Maitland, Delia Deetz & Barbara Maitland, Delia Deetz & Lydia Deetz, Delia Deetz & Original Character(s), Lydia Deetz & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, The Ensemble & Jockey (Beetlejuice)
Comments: 112
Kudos: 195





	1. Delia

Every morning while the five other occupants of her house slept soundly, Delia Schlimmer Deetz would wake with the sunrise, set amethyst around herself while perched on a yoga mat, and meditate for an hour. It calmed her frayed nerves and centered her chakras before she charged into a strange and unusual day. Most of the time, it was exactly the wake up she needed. But some days, well, not so much.

“Charles, must you leave at this hour? And on a Sah-tur-day?” Delia groaned out each syllable from her bed while her new husband not-so-subtly picked up the pace at which he tied his tie.

Always a fan of the physical over the verbal, Charles raised his eyebrow at her, a silent question about why she was so pressed about a single Saturday meeting they’d known about for three months.

“It’s…early,” Delia supplied. “Rise with the sun, feel as one, wake with the dark, your day gets no spark.”

Charles cracked a smile. “Did Kevin tell you that?”

“Charles, Oth—Kevin had some smarty smarty smartness that still applies once in awhile,” Delia blushed. She had gotten pretty good about abandoning Otho logo …for the most part. But hey, she was tired. It was early. Who could blame her?

Charles sighed and leaned over to grab his suitcase in a hurried, apologetic goodbye. “I’ll see you tonight dearest. I promise I won’t be home late again.”

And that was that.

Delia pouted, though the effect wasn’t as satisfying without someone there to see it. She always had trouble sleeping alone, but for some reason it was a little easier to blame her discontent on Charles’ morning meeting instead, though she was sure he realized either way and just cared enough not to make her say it out loud.

With her precise, prompt, and centering schedule out the window, Delia rose without a full night’s sleep and more disappointingly without a kiss goodbye from her husband. (Little did she know that same regret occurred to Charles as he was zipping down the highway towards his office, and he made a promise to swing by the flower shop and kiss her breathless later.)

Still, Delia broke a dreadful Otho-ism and woke with the dark and no spark. That should’ve been the first red flag.

The second red flag should’ve been when the Maitlands ditched their weekend plans of helping her restore an antique wooden shelf meant to hold Delia’s psych books after being summoned by Miss Argentina for something ominously referred to as “Netherworld business” (“I’m so sorry Delia, we promise we’ll be back in no time and then we can go nuts!”).

The third red flag was definitely the burnt vegan blueberry pancakes she tried and failed to make for a frustrated Lydia before the teen retreated into her room for a day of (allegedly) catching up on homework. And the fourth red flag was probably the lingering feeling of defeat that stemmed from living in a house with a husband, stepdaughter, two ghosts, and a recently kinda-sorta-reformed demon, yet still managing to face a crushingly empty day alone.

But the empty day, empty stomach, lack of sleep, and lack of any companionship weren’t what did it. Not really, anyway. Of all things, it came down to Instagram.

Instagram was a new thing in their household–Delia just *adored* repost accounts (“Lydia!! Have you seen this me-me??” she shrieked about three times a day), even if no one else in the house would humor her by scrolling through them side-by-side for hours on end—but after spending part of the day on her couch flipping through the app, a string of notifications put everything on pause for Delia.

What she’d wanted were cute videos of corgis or maybe a shitpost to snicker at. What she got instead was a blast from the past in cruel, alarming, exceptionally shitty ex-boyfriend form.

For some reason, Delia forced out an unconvincing laugh at the sight of her ex-boyfriend Viall’s name popping up in her notifications, and she immediately hated herself for it.

“still got it, wow,” he left a comment on one of her pictures in between strings and strings of likes.

Another notification. “is it hot in here or is it just you? ;)”

She remembered how smitten she’d been the first time he’d used that *exact* cheesy line on her. She was at a bar drinking away her sorrows two months after her husband and his not-so-secret boyfriend left and sailed away to Rome, and Viall’s devotion was addicting. At first. Viall’s rapt, intense attention on her made her swoon until it made her nervous until it made her scared, and that fear was eventually joined by deep deep sadness, then worthlessness, then bruises, and then a broken femur bone, before she got up the nerve to get away from him.

The notifications kept coming.

“glad to see you haven’t lost it.”

She was living with two ghosts and a demon from hell who crawled pleadingly back into their lives about six months prior, so Delia might’ve considered that her not “losing it” was questionable if she hadn’t been so caught off guard by her ex taking real estate on her phone in the first place.

“It’s no big deal,” she lied to herself aloud. “It’s fine,” she lied again.

“knockout ;)” Viall commented on her literal wedding photo with Charles, as Delia watched the phone and felt strangely helpless. She suddenly and brutally remembered what it felt like to have Viall’s thumbs sink into her throat as if he were kneading bread, knocking the wind out of her until he really did knock her out. Her throat constricted in memory, breath shortening, and though she couldn’t see it herself, the color drained from her face.

“I wanna see you soon. catch up properly.”

Oh how she remembered what “catching up properly” meant. She remembered well. Without her typical bright foundation to buoy her, her thoughts snapped to the worst-case scenario. What if this meant Viall planned to force his way back into her life? What if he wouldn’t go away? What if he found where she, where _her family_ , lived? What if he showed up at the house unannounced?

“Think positive, think positive, think positive Delia,” she muttered as she finally chucked away her phone as if it had burned her, the device thumping against the fireplace. Maybe it’d fillet the phone for her and this would all be over.

She told herself she just needed to lie down, that’s all. Just a quick lie down would do it. She tried and failed to suck in more air while walking up the stairs as she sped through her options.

Barbara and Adam were still in the Netherworld, so she couldn’t knock on the attic door. Lydia was in her room studying (and as Delia eventually learned after the sixth attempt at girl talk while she did homework, studying really meant studying *undisturbed*), and Beetlejuice hadn’t been seen or heard from since the evening before…which was probably a sign of trouble, now that Delia thought about it. But she couldn’t focus on that now. If she could just reach her room, maybe lying down would fine-tune her aura and get the phantom panic out of her system. She really couldn’t think of what else to do.

The harder Delia pushed herself to suck air in, the more her chest hurt. It was like her muscles were reacting to triggers she’d long-since evaded, and when she finally reached the top of the staircase, a wave of dizziness hit, causing her to lean back ever so slightly on shaky legs. Her face started to tilt up toward the ceiling as she moved backwards down the stairs…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I love this musical with my whole heart. I have big plans for each character to get serious love in this story and already have a lot written, but I truthfully struggle with motivation sometimes. Comments are very helpful for that and appreciated always <3 I’ll try my very best to upload a new piece each Monday!!


	2. Lydia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delia's about to take a tumble down the staircase when Lydia thankfully intervenes.

_Previously:_ _The harder Delia pushed herself to suck air in, the more her chest hurt. It was like her muscles were reacting to triggers she’d long-since evaded, and when she finally reached the top of the staircase, a wave of dizziness hit, causing her to lean back ever so slightly on shaky legs. Her face started to tilt up toward the ceiling as she moved backwards down the stairs…_

“WHOA.”

Two small fists shot out and pulled Delia forward by the front of her dress, snapping off her necklace accidentally in the process. The malachite pendant clunked down the steps Delia almost plummeted over. 

As Lydia’s face swam in front of her, Delia recognized the distressed expression. It looked kind of like when the teen had darted into the Netherworld a year prior. When had Delia’s eyes unfocused? She hadn’t even noticed.

“You almost fell backwards down the stairs!” Lydia said accusingly, still clutching the front of Delia’s dress with one hand, the other gripping the older woman’s arm while dragging her safely a full step away.

“I,” Delia started, trying to spit out some semblance of an explanation. “I—“

Lydia could feel Delia’s chest shakily rise and fall as she tried and mostly failed to take a breath in. A light bulb went off. A tiny miracle. 

“Sit down,” Lydia instructed, helping a trembling Delia to her knees. “Hey it’s okay, just sit down for a second.”

At a loss for what to do, Delia complied, letting Lydia ease her down until she was lying in the middle of the hallway.

“I think you’re having a panic attack,” Lydia said.

“Panic attack? N—no,” Delia attempted to laugh, unconvincing to even her own ears. “I—I’m amazing. I’m _amazing_ , just—“ she gasped a little as she couldn’t quite get a grip on her breathing. It felt like something— _someone_ —was sitting on her.

“Okay stop trying to talk,” Lydia interrupted, her brisk tone contrasting the gentle movement of her fingers as she combed Delia’s red bangs out of her face. “It’ll only make it worse.”

To Lydia’s surprise and Delia’s horror, the tender rhythm of Lydia’s hands hit a nerve, and Delia dropped her façade enough for tears to pool in her eyes. But even though Lydia demanded silence, quiet had never been Delia’s strong suit.

“I–I didn’t think this would happen to me anymore,” she said breathily as Lydia wiped a stray tear off her face. “It happened for a reason, but it was done. Super done. I thought I w—was over this.”

That was news to Lydia. Of course she had her suspicions about Delia’s past—a long string of betrayals and abandonment, especially by men, it seemed—but she hadn’t known it involved panic attacks. Now that she thought about it though, she hadn’t known Delia to admit much more than white knuckled positivity. Even when Lydia could see right through it.

Lydia didn’t say anything at first, just curled alongside her stepmom on the floor like a cat, occasionally brushing away tears from her face. But when Delia’s breath hitched from the tears and the panic, she knew it wasn’t quite calming enough.

“I used to get them, you know,” Lydia said softly after a beat. “At school. After mom died. I tried going to the nurse’s office once. She wanted me to talk through it. It only made it worse.”

Delia’s slightly unfocused eyes snapped to the teen.

“That’s how I know talking doesn’t always help,” Lydia explained before lying on her back and holding Delia’s hand in her own. If Barbara and Adam—or Beetlejuice, who told Lydia he was spending the day helping the Netherworld Jockey cause some chaos, unbeknownst to the other members of the house—came home right then, it’d look almost like they were stargazing at the bare second floor ceiling. After everything that’d happened in that house, that wouldn’t really be cause for a second glance.

“Close your eyes and when you feel like you can, try to match my breathing,” Lydia said quietly, squeezing Delia’s hand.

Delia nodded.

She tried to let the quiet and calm of the house soak into her own skin somehow, like one of the forty serums she insisted on stocking in her and Charles’ medicine cabinet that she _swore_ were miracle elixirs. Last month, Beetlejuice went through a phase of dumping and replacing them with gross stuff like crushed bugs and bird spit. It made Lydia laugh and *infuriated* Delia at the time, but somehow the thought of it was soothing now. Maybe she really was losing it.

After some time passed—five minutes? Thirty minutes? It was anyone’s guess—and Delia’s breathing evened out in Lydia’s mind from “holy shit she’s gonna faint” to “mildly abnormal but whatever I’ll take it,” the teen spoke up again.

“Think you can stand without diving down the stairs again?”

Delia took one more deep breath and then gave an awkward slight smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh, yes. Yeah.”

Lydia helped her up and into the bedroom Delia shared with Charles, slightly concerned that Delia didn’t protest her taking the lead.

“Lydia. I’m sorry I scared you,” Delia started. “I’ll lie down and be good as new again!”

Lydia couldn’t even muster the energy to be mad at that obvious lie because it seemed Delia was trying so hard to believe it herself. It almost made it worse.

“I’m okay. Really.”

Instead of arguing, Lydia fussed with the covers around Delia unnecessarily, left a glass of water on the night table like Delia did for her when she caught the stomach flu one time, and got ready to leave the room with a promise not to call Charles. (“He has a busi-nass meeting!” Delia said with conviction Lydia didn’t even pretend to understand.)

“Just rest,” Lydia said. “It’ll be okay.” Before finally closing her eyes, Delia looked like she believed Lydia more than when she had said the words herself only moments earlier.

“Lydia?”

The teen turned.

“Thank you.”

Before Lydia left to grab her homework (which she was TOTALLY DOING earlier) so she could keep an eye on her stepmom, she couldn’t help but fondly brush Delia’s bangs out of her face one last time and squeeze her shoulder, though she’d vehemently deny it, even under torture, if ever asked about it later.

And finally, the house was quiet again.

With Delia resting and Lydia making a silent but watchful camp on a chair right outside her door (just in case, because even though Lydia was TOTALLY FINE AND UNBOTHERED, she was still….worried. And maybe a little bothered), the relative quiet and calm of the house remained. And it stayed that way for a while.

At least it did until the next family member returned home, took a stroll around the foyer, and spied Delia’s beloved malachite necklace broken at the bottom of the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New plan: I’m updating this every Monday *and* Thursday on the dot! Whoo00o000o0o00ooo should come home first? Charles, Barbara (and/or) Adam, or Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)? Tell me what you think!


	3. Beetlejuice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice finds a treasure, but gets more than he bargained for after returning from causing Netherworld mayhem with the Jockey. Who knew the Deetz house could actually freak him out?

If there was one thing Beetlejuice delighted in more than anything, it was causing Deetz Mayhem.

“Deetz Mayhem” being a term defined (literally, by Beetlejuice and Lydia, after way too many sugary hot chocolates) as “that which specifically accomplishes the goal of pestering the hell out of Charles and/or Delia Schlimmer Deetz.” If it were in a dictionary, it’d take up two full pages and would include things like EXHIBIT 7C: House demon incinerates toaster in the kitchen sink while attempting to summon a water/fire hell hound, and FIGURE 4H: A graph charting Charles Deetz’s hairline receding out of pure unadulterated stress, inching him closer and closer toward baldness.

Even putting wholesome chaos aside though, Beetlejuice liked messing around with Delia’s stuff specifically, with or without an audience. Her crystals and perfumes and cosmetic potions came in all sorts of fun shapes and colors and typically smelled amazing, sometimes even bubbling in a way that made him stop and consider whether or not she was an actual witch. (He’s still only like 90 percent sure she’s not.) 

So when Beetlejuice came home from a last-minute liaison with the Netherworld Jockey, shouted “I’m HOOOOOMMMEEEE” and then spotted Delia’s malachite pendant at the bottom of the stairs, he wasn’t just happy. He was *ecstatic*.

“No. Fucking. Way,” he froze in the middle of the hallway, fully abandoning his quest to raid the kitchen for peanut butter snacks, his eyes laser-focused on the necklace like a cat drawn to catnip. “No fucking WAYYYY.”

It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t. Delia had gotten the malachite pendant from Adam as a gift for “Christ-mas,” and she essentially never took it off, no matter how many times Beetlejuice pestered her to give it to him. (“My hair’s GREEN Debra, you’re stepping on my territory here. My color my thing!”)

Holding it up against the light, it sure looked legit—though it weirdly had a crack in it. Did she drop it down the stairs while burning sage in the house again? Eh, well it didn’t really matter right? Finder’s keepers was the name of the game, especially when Beetlejuice was the finder.

To be extra safe it was really Delia’s malachite necklace and not some trick from Lydia (because she _would_ lure him into a prank via duplicitous crystal), Beetlejuice did the only logical thing he could do. He popped that sucker right into his mouth.

“Mhmmmmm,” Beetlejuice chewed the necklace over. “Mhm. Hmm.”

Yep, it was definitely Delia’s (broken) malachite pendant. Using an industrious-sounding mouth technique that’d put cherry-twisting tongues to shame, Beetlejuice clamped down on the pendant, swirled it around comically, then spit a restored version back out, completely fixed and free of all disfiguration except for his own saliva.

“Lydia’s gotta see this,” Beetlejuice said to himself after closing the now-fixed necklace clasp around himself, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

“Hey LYDS, you’ll never guess what I got—“

“SHHHHH!” He rounded the corner and came face-to-face with Lydia, who looked grimmer than usual.

“Oh come ON, I know it’s been ‘Silence of the Lambs’ in here all day, stop being a—“

“Delia’s not okay,” Lydia interrupted.

Beetlejuice looked perplexed, but immediately shut up and focused with rare single-minded attention.

“She had a panic attack and almost fell down the stairs.”

The demon said nothing, but his hair flashed from its typical green to stark white and back again, which Lydia had only seen once, when Juno attacked. She guessed it meant he was feeling something bad.

“What’s she panicking about?” he asked, cradling the malachite pendant in his hands more reverently than before.

Lydia barely knew how to explain it to herself, let alone a 600-year-old demon with a knack for abject pandemonium and a second-grade reading level (though he and Barbara were working on that, thank you very much).

“I think it’s something about her past. She’s had them before, I guess.”

Beetlejuice deflated a little.

“I didn’t know either,” Lydia added. “We should probably leave her alone.”

“Cool,” Beetlejuice considered that for about seven seconds. “I’m gonna see her.”

“Beej no—“

“I’m gonna see her!”

“You’ll wake her up!”

“No I won’t! Nuh uh, nope. I’m just….giving this necklace back! Yeah, that’s it. Returning it!”

Lydia didn’t look convinced. “Uh huh. And you can’t do that later because…?”

“Nope, gotta do it right now.”

“Because…”

“Beeeee-causssse she never takes this off! Which means she needs it. Wow did you forget how IMPORTANT it is to her Lydia? I thought you cared.”

“Where have you even been all day?” Lydia questioned abruptly, realizing for the first time that her favorite household demon hadn’t actually told her more than ‘I’m going to the Netherworld with the Jockey to fuck shit up, be back whenevs.’

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. “And here I thought Darla and Babs were the ones who won't shut up about schedules. Now’s not the time babes, I have an important errand to run, so if you don’t mind,” he gently pushed her aside telekinetically, a way to show her he wasn’t actually kidding this time.

“Alright, alright,” Lydia said, choosing her battles wisely. “Just be careful, okay? She’s…tired,” Lydia added. “Be gentle.”

“Oh I can be gentle!” Beetlejuice said. “The ‘G’ in Beetlejuice stands for GENTLE!”

“You have a J in your name, Beej, not a G,” Lydia said.

“I AM A G,” Beetlejuice said as he uncharacteristically paid Lydia no other mind, being four steps ahead already with his handle on the Deetz’s bedroom door.

In all honesty, he didn’t really know what to expect.

Delia was like him most of the time, always pulsing with energy. One time when he and Charles got into an argument about which length of shorts was appropriate to wear in dead winter (“SPEEDO LEVEL,” was Beetlejuice’s personal opinion), he noticed Delia carefully counting her fingers in the corner—kinda like the stimming stuff she read about out loud to him in her psych book as she took undergraduate college classes online for the degree she recently started.

He wanted to go back and make her read it to him again, but he toppled the entire psych book shelf the week before, scattering her collection until she and the Maitlands could restore some new shelving. Oops.

He almost expected Delia to be flitting about in sleep like she did while awake but he’d never actually seen Delia sleep before, mostly because despite popular belief he was not, in fact, an actual creepy old guy. Still, he knew she had trouble sometimes and tossed and turned (“Nightmares, but I’ll redirect them!” he heard her admit to Adam once when they didn’t realize he was there). But if he didn’t know any better, which…sometimes he didn’t, he wouldn’t have guessed she was even in the room based on the unmoving, suspiciously small lump under the blankets. Beetlejuice crept up to the bed to get a better look.

She was so so still, and he immediately hated it.

He swallowed heavily and put the malachite on her bedside table with a plunk, and that’s when Delia’s breath hitched.

“…uh….Delia?”

Her eyes snapped open, having not realized anyone was in the room with her, but once Delia saw it was Beetlejuice, she immediately relaxed. It made his hair go a shade lighter in recognition that his presence didn’t distress her and in fact…calmed her? Beetlejuice didn’t know if he should be worried about that. 

“I, uh, brought this back,” he said lamely, gesturing to the bedside table where the malachite necklace sat, chain tucked delicately underneath it.

Delia knew immediately she was not awake or well enough for this, but she swallowed the thought. “Oh!” she exclaimed politely and with slight surprise, as if she wasn’t sitting in her bed at 3 p.m. looking like death warmed over. “How nice,” she said.

An awkward silence lingered, which was a rarity for the two of them, who typically fell into a pleasant almost mother-son-like rapport with ease. Beetlejuice made no effort to fill the pause.

“Thank you,” she added, plastering a smile on her face, not making a move to even look at the necklace.

Silence again. Clearly this wasn’t going anywhere with Delia not chattering on like usual, but the demon had zero intention of leaving. So he improvised.

“Sooooooo, uh. How’s the weather in there?”

Delia gave him a completely blank stare from the bed. Beetlejuice never was one for small talk.

“Alright alright,” he grumbled. “What even happened to you?”

She’d never admit it out loud, but for a brief, split second, Delia thought about telling Beetlejuice everything. The whole Viall story, broken bones and bruises and terror and gory details and all. Because she knew what could happen, what Beetlejuice could theoretically do to Viall in retaliation. She’d seen him almost do it to their own family. But as soon as the impulse came to her, she retreated. She wasn’t that person. She didn’t ever want to become that person.

“I had an…inci-dant and was not feeling well,” Delia said evenly. “But now I’m fine and happy and there’s nothing to worry about at all!”

Beetlejuice’s hair flashed darker in annoyance, but unlike Lydia he was not down for well-mannered evasion. Beetlejuice didn’t say it out loud, but he thought Delia looked paler than plenty of actual dead people he’d met in the Netherworld. But telling Lydia and Barbara that on days when they looked like complete shit only resulted in them shunning him, so he rephrased himself.

“Uh. Huh. Doesn’t look like it, Delia,” he said. “Are you fainty?”

“Am I—what?”

“Fainty,” Beetlejuice repeated himself, cris crossing his legs mid-air. “Like you can’t breathe and the world spins and everything’s totally fucking wrong and you just wanna smash everything including yourself?”

Delia didn’t know how to answer him.

“Hey don’t look at me like that, everyone can be fainty sometimes! I spent like 64 years being fainty in the Netherworld.”

“Sixty-four _years_?” Delia said with concern, resigning away sleep in favor of sitting up against her headboard. This seemed like it could take awhile. “Were you not feeling well for that long? Why?”

Beetlejuice sighed in frustration. Why was communicating with breathers not named Lydia Deetz so hard sometimes?

“I felt fine, okay? It was more like I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat and nobody was around until Miss Argentina started talking to me, and I mostly wanted to die but I was basically already dead! But otherwise it was chill.” 

“I guess it is kind of like that,” Delia acquiesced.

“I got fainty ‘cause Argentina fucking ignored me and my mom came back and my scars hurt and I ate way too many mung beans. What’s your excuse?”

Delia hesitated, shuddering slightly as Viall’s toothy grin flashed through her head. “I saw something that reminded me of my unhappiness. And it felt real and alive again,” she said. “It was scary.”

Beetlejuice’s hair turned one shade lighter, and he put his hand near hers—not grabbing it, because “GRABBING PEOPLE OUT OF THE BLUE IS NOT APPROPRIATE PHYSICAL COMMUNICATION, BEETLEJUICE,” as Barbara reminded him over and over again—but still nearby in case she wanted to hold it.

And hold it she did.

“I get scared,” he said. “Some scared is the fun kind of scared. But some isn’t.”

He was suddenly reminded of his own fear during the limbo of the month-long period between when he returned secretly from the Netherworld to the Deetz house and when the family accepted him back. Delia was the first to actually notice him hovering around discretely, turning himself into green-and-gray-ish pots and pans to blend in. She could’ve screamed or exorcised him, or outed him to the whole family, or cursed and hexed him, if the 10 percent of Beetlejuice that thought she was a witch pulled through. But instead she wore her mint-colored malachite pendant more often and started dropping obvious hints about how they all needed more green in their lives to help make the house less depressing.

He’d never forget that kindness, not now or the next 600 years from now. Up until that exact point, the thought of them rejecting him outright, *that* had truly scared Beetlejuice. And he realized so did seeing Delia like this.

“It.”

Delia looked at him expectantly as he ground his teeth.

“It is imp—ah fuck.”

He looked deep in thought as he parsed out the sentence he was thinking as if he were speaking another language entirely. It was a new look for him.

“It is important,” he rolled each word in his mouth like he could taste it. “To me. That you are. Okay.”

It occurred to Delia that she’d never really had someone (some-demon?) actually say that to her before. “Aw. Beetlejuice. Thank you, I am full of gratitude, even if this is depressing and not, well, normal of me,” she said with a little unconcealed shame.

“Well fuck normal,” Beetlejuice replied easily. “What the fuck is normal? If a lot of people have these, then would it be normal? If 100 percent of people in this room have them, THEN is it normal? Wake up Darlene, normal doesn’t actually mean anything.”

Delia looked at him with wider eyes than usual. Beetlejuice feeling comfortable enough to call her by the wrong name again actually made her feel a little more “normal” herself. 

She smiled a little smile. “Thank you Beetlejuice,” she said before letting out a yawn she couldn’t quite conceal. 

“Yeah yeah right, I’ll leave, I’ll leave. Just don’t fall down the stairs again, you scared… Scarecrow.” She knew what he had really meant to say and took the small gift for what it was.

As she lay back down, part of Delia recognized that Charles, Barbara, and Adam would all be home soon, so she vowed to rest up and put on the happiest face she could. It was one thing to ease Lydia and Beetlejuice’s concerns. The other three were less likely to be appeased once they heard what happened.

Delia probably didn’t give Beetlejuice enough credit though. Because even though he said he’d left and made a scene of carefully closing her bedroom door in a showy exit, when Delia started resting again, she could hear how he’d pop in through the ceiling every five minutes on the dot to make sure everything was cool, even refilling her water glass once. Just to check. Just in case.

And who would’ve thought, that was the thing that made her genuinely smile for the first time all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter. I’d love your thoughts on the story so far and what parts worked well for you, your comments have been so unbelievably motivating!


	4. Charles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles comes home after a long day and accidentally scares Delia. Good thing Beetlejuice and Lydia are around.
> 
> (Warning, there's a lil smut in this, because it's Charles and Delia so of course there is. There ya go.)

Delia slept for what felt like days but was certainly only hours. How was it possible to sleep so much and yet rest so little?

She was on the cusp of unconsciousness, starting to nod off again, when she heard the mumbles of two people having a conversation through the door. She couldn’t really make it out—her head wasn’t swimming as much as before, though sleep still crept closer—but it became crystal clear Lydia was talking to Charles when the volume of his voice shot up with vibrant alarm. 

“She almost WHAT?”

Delia jumped at the sound and briefly fluttered her eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable. Charles was a protective man, after all. It was part of what drew her to him in the first place, that alluring, intoxicating shield of safety. 

When anyone else so much as glanced at her the wrong way, Charles was right there, teeth bared, even if others called him a douche for it.

When Beetlejuice and Juno had each attacked the house last year, Charles kept Delia safely tucked behind him as they ran and dodged debris, even when it meant he got hit with wall plaster hard enough to bruise him. And God help that one guy who tried to pull a move on Delia at Lydia’s parent-teacher conference night, because Charles made it scarily clear he’d throw punches after the man’s hand dipped too low for comfort on Delia’s back during a hug hello.

Not five seconds after Delia heard him in the hallway, Charles banged their bedroom door open with unintentional panicked force, Lydia and Beetlejuice both hot on his heels.

At the sound of the door hitting the wall, Delia kept her focus on the ceiling and tried to regulate her breathing like she did during Savasana pose in yoga. It had been years since she’d escaped that door-banging noise on a regular basis, but still, her muscles constricted and remembered, her breath seeming to forget that Charles and Viall were completely different people.

“Delia!” Charles was generally soft spoken, but his voice boomed when he was either excited or terrified. He was definitely the latter.

It made Delia flinch.

“Hey Chuck,” Beetlejuice interrupted, immediately noticing the tight way Delia was holding herself.

“Sweet Jesus woman, what happened?” he came up to Delia, who hadn’t moved a muscle since the door flung open.

“Chuck!”

“Delia, are you alright? Say something,“ Charles said, moving his hands to take Delia’s shell-shocked face in his—

“CHARLES,” Beetlejuice shouted firmly, his hair blazing red.

 _That_ got his attention, and Charles froze. He couldn’t remember the last time Beetlejuice called him “Charles" and not "Chuck," "asshole," or his least favorite, "daddy." It didn’t take long for Charles to put the pieces together after looking from Beetlejuice to Delia’s pale and shaken face, and he immediately jerked his hands back to himself as if he’d touched an open flame.

“Dearest…” he said much more softly, and Delia really looked at him for the first time since he’d walked in.

She didn’t trust herself to say anything without bursting into unwelcome tears, so she just gave him a watery smile that quickly slid off her face and shook her head, pleading he’d get it. To his credit, he did.

“Would you please give us a moment alone?” Charles turned and spoke to Lydia and Beetlejuice softly without breaking eye contact with his wife. Lydia nodded and departed with one last glance at her parents, and though Beetlejuice looked a little more hesitant, he followed her lead as his hair faded into a more normal shade, closing the door behind them.

Charles eased into the space next to Delia on the bed.

“Dearest?” he repeated quietly, slowly moving a few strands of her bangs out of her face with the cautious and visible precision with which you’d handle a wounded animal. It reminded Delia of when Lydia did the same thing on the hallway floor only a few hours back.

And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Delia’s face completely crumbled as she rolled into his embrace to hide herself with the start of heavy sobs.

Delia was a very emotional person—something Charles adored about her—but in truth, she didn’t actually “break down” often. Tears over a burnt lacto-vegetarian dinner or a frustratingly low psych paper grade in her college class or this really emotional HGTV show Barbara showed her? Sure. Easily. But to truly sob and CRY cry without having enough presence of mind to snap back into a happy stupor like a rubber band at any minute? Rarely.

In fact, the only time Charles had ever seen Delia really and truly sob with abandon was when she finally told him why she had nightmares. From the way she’d just reacted to him, he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that this had to do with that same root cause—Viall.

Charles had never wanted to kill another man more in his entire life than after hearing what he did to Delia, who seemed maddeningly incapable of blaming anyone but herself (and the general spiritual “everything happens for a reason” universe) for it. And while Charles was typically non-violent, after spending many nights coaxing Delia out of sleep terrors where she’d wake shaking and petrified, he had long ago given himself quiet permission to act on any fatal impulses if the opportunity ever arose.

As Delia cried this time, Charles gently cradled her to his chest, running his hands up and down her arms to ground her, and peppering her forehead with soft kisses. She finally let herself fall to pieces, the fear, embarrassment, and shame of the day catching up with her now that she finally finally *finally* felt at home in Charles’ arms.

“You’re safe,” he said. “I promise you Delia, whatever happened, you are safe here. We are safe.” A tiny tear of his own slipped out, but he didn’t acknowledge it.

The first time Delia had told him about Viall, Charles spent the entire night clutching her close like a security blanket while internally fuming. He hadn’t told Delia, but after The Beetlejuice Incident the year prior, he even went to Adam and Barbara and asked to see the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ —just in case there was something, _anything_ , that could take some of her buried pain away, whether it be the nightmares, or the memories, or the evil man himself. As hard as the three of them tried though, reading the entire book backwards and forwards letter by letter just in case, they found nothing.

“Is it that man?” Charles asked quietly after some time had passed and Delia’s cries lessened, though she still trembled.

Delia hiccupped, and with the sobs wearing her out, she just nodded.

“He is gone Delia, he can’t hurt you—“

“No Charles,” Delia sounded strangled and Charles realized this was the first time all night she had actually spoken to him. “He can. This is more than a shift in perspective,” her voice broke and she sounded defeated. “Viall is back.”

Charles stiffened and his eyes snapped to hers in greater alarm.

“Delia, what do you mean?”

“I mean he is back, Charles! His energy is present!”

“Why do you think—“

“I saw him!” she cried.

“Where?? Where?”

“On—on,” she let out something between a hiccup and a gasp. “On _Instagram_!”

Charles was shocked for a moment before sighing in relief, though he attempted to conceal it.

“You saw him...on Instagram?”

Delia nodded, burrowing her face deeper into Charles’ chest.

If any thought of _this_ being easier to manage crossed Charles’ mind, it left it only a second later when Delia continued.

“He won’t stop.”

Charles quickly became alarmed again.

“What are you talking about? I thought he was a, a, a mere social media presence?”

“He contacted me,” Delia explained, worn out. “I know you aren’t on Insta-grahm, but it means he’s seen. He knows about my life, _our_ life. He says he wants to ‘catch up’ with me. Properly.” 

She shivered, and Charles felt like throwing up at the thought of Viall and Delia together.

“We are not going to let that happen. _I_ am not going to let that happen, Delia. I swear it!”

Delia just nodded, her face pressed into his neck.

After a bit, she sniffed a little before looking up at him with huge, mascara-dripped doe eyes he loved so much. “I love you Charles.”

“And I love you Delia,” he replied, leaning in for a kiss.

It was meant to be a comforting kiss—and it was—but neither of them made any move to break apart. And thus, the tempo began to shift and flare, especially when Delia nipped at Charles’ bottom lip.

The needs to protect and be protected, to love and be loved, to finally come together and embrace in the way they both knew best began to overtake them in a heat of passion, lips melting, hands clutching, and energy changing rapidly from the melancholy of the day into something much richer, much more passionate. Much more _them_.

Before they knew it, they were both breathless and thoughtless with kiss-stained lips, Delia on her back with her entire neckline exposed, Charles above her, hesitating for once.

“We don’t have to—Are you sure you—I don’t want you to—.”

She moaned and gave a frustrated nod, tugging his hips closer to her own, and that was enough for Charles to dive right back in with aplomb.

Later on, their clothes long forgotten, they lay in silence without making any move to rest. In that quiet, Delia spoke. (Quiet _really_ wasn’t her thing.)

“Charles, you,” she began. “You wouldn’t…leave me…right? If he did come back?”

He stiffened in surprise.

“Delia, I’m not even going to answer a question like that,” his eye twitched as he watched her face fall, sighing when he realized she was actually dead serious. “Of course I wouldn’t leave you. I love you. You’re brilliant. You know this.”

She looked up at him through heavy lashes. “Say it again.”

“I love you. You’re brilliant. You know this.”

The ghost of a wicked smile graced her face, as her hands moved lower.

“Say it again, Charles. Again!”

At once they were swept up in each other again, the world outside of “Charles and Delia, Delia and Charles” completely and blissfully forgotten as they knew it.

Further into the night, when they’d worn even Charles “Good at Sex” Deetz out, his hand lazily traced Delia’s bare hip bone, occasionally dipping to the scars above her femur bone from when Viall had once kicked it in and snapped it. The scars used to make him sad, but now they just reminded him that the woman curled into him was stronger than people gave her credit for.

He looked down at his bride. “Are you spiritually nourished?” he asked teasingly, stealing one of her own lines like salacious thief. It earned him a smile.

“Don’t you worry, Charles. I am positive we’re okay now. Our energy is proof.”

He vaguely registered that she hadn’t _actually_ answered his question, but her lips on his neck shut down all musings and he blurted out the next thing on his mind without really thinking.

“I brought you flowers,” he groaned against her forehead as her eyes met his in muted delight. “This morning we didn’t kiss goodbye, and, and, and damn it! I should’ve never left the house without that.”

“You bet your ass you shouldn’t,” she teased, nibbling at his earlobe.

“Never again.”

Delia smiled, satisfied. “What kind of flowers?”

“Bellflowers.” Purple, of course. Her favorite color.

“Bellflowers have happy spiritual properties, you know. They can represent gratitude, devotion, and even everlast—“

“Everlasting love,” he interrupted, too excited and relieved to see his wife perk up to stop himself. “It’s why I chose them. I’m glad you like it.”

They cuddled close and prepared for sleep, and yet, it didn’t come. Delia wished, not for the first time that day, that she hadn’t misplaced her vape pen. She could really use the hit.

“Ask me something,” Delia said after a short time, filling the hushed house.

This was an intimate ritual of theirs, something neither of them had ever done with a partner before; asking questions late at night, in the dark, when one or both of them struggled to nod off. They started doing it the year before, when they realized their bond was deeper than just sex and “looking like a real family,” and they had actual potential to _become_ a real family.

Charles in particular spent a lot of time working on feelings after his and Lydia’s trip to the Netherworld. While Delia took the shock and trauma of what happened as a wake up call to trust herself and work on better understanding those with different viewpoints, Charles used it to open himself to his fiancée and his daughter alike—and the effects were noticeable.

No, he still wasn’t great with the whole feelings thing. But he could talk to Lydia and listen without judgment. He could give Adam some encouragement and know when to back off when Barbara was annoyed and ruffle Beetlejuice’s hair when he noticed they had bad days. And he could be more candid with Delia than he’d been with anyone before, even Emily, as opening further and further up didn’t scare him like he’d expected as much as it just made him feel good.

As they’d hold each other on nights when Charles’ head was filled with investment deals that fell through and shook his confidence, or Delia’s nightmares woke with her feeling choked, they’d ground each other physically and then in blunt, Q&A-based honesty that cemented the foundation of their entire relationship.

“Hmm?”

“Ask me something, Charles. Anything.”

“Why didn’t you have Lydia call me? When you fell?” he asked quietly, squeezing her closer.

She sighed. “I didn’t fall Charles. I was not myself. And your busi-nass meeting was so—“

“So inconsequential!” his voice raised, but he adjusted the volume immediately. By the look on their friendly neighborhood demon’s face earlier, Charles was fairly sure Beetlejuice was monitoring the volume to _some_ degree while Delia was this skittish. Hopefully not a close degree though, considering what they had just been up to. 

“It was so inconsequential,” he repeated softer. “Compared to us. Compared to you.”

“It won’t happen again. But if...if it does. I’ll call.” She sighed. “Ask me something else.”

“Why haven’t you slept yet?” He could tell despite the hours she spent in bed, she hadn’t truly rested. 

“I’m afraid. Of what sleep will do to my ess-ance,” Delia said. “Nightmares are not relaxing.”

Charles held her tighter. “I’m sorry.” The silence was a little more unwanted, a little more vulnerable, so Charles did her a kindness by moving forward. “Your turn.”

Delia seemed relieved. “Are Barbara and Adam home yet?”

“I don’t think so. Lydia said they left this morning and haven’t been back yet.”

In truth, Lydia had mentioned offhandedly that she had not seen the Maitlands that day after Miss Argentina had apparently “summoned” them for something mandatory in the Netherworld.

It didn’t escape Charles’ attention that when Lydia was saying this, Beetlejuice was doing his damn best not to make eye contact with anyone, while looking…guilty? Preoccupied? Amused?? Whatever the case, that couldn’t be good. None of this spelled out to anything peaceful or soothing, so Charles said nothing further so he wouldn’t overstress his wife. They could figure out what was going on in the Netherworld later.

“Your turn,” Delia said with a slight yawn that gave Charles hope that sleep was on the horizon for them both.

“Do you remember when I had a panic attack?” Charles asked.

She did. It had been after he hired Delia to help Lydia, but before they’d started dating. Charles was attempting to secure the Maitlands’ house, profoundly stressed out by Lydia withdrawing into herself, and also struggling to bottle his blossoming feelings for Delia under a layer of deep guilt and grief when it all caught up to him one day in his study.

Charles felt Delia nod. “I do. Why Charles?”

“I’d never had one before in my life. But it taught me they could happen to anyone, really,” he considered. “Sometimes it’s hard. Being a person.”

He remembered how horrible it felt, the shortness of breath causing him to further freak before he got dizzy, gripping the edge of his desk for support. Of course that was the exact moment Delia walked in to talk about cashing her first pay stub.

They hadn’t even had more than a few conversations, Charles mostly avoiding her like the plague due to what he saw as his blatantly obvious desire to throw her on the table and make love with the woman, but after a brief moment of shock, Delia sat with him, helping him breathe through it, helping him get to the other side of pure unadulterated panic with some semblance of kooky optimism.

He didn’t say it out loud, but he knew right then that he loved her.

“Do you remember what you told me then, Delia?” Charles asked, thinking back. “You told me that my feelings were valid. And it was okay to feel them. And that feeling your feelings doesn’t make you a weak or bad person, nor does it mean you _are_ those feelings, or that you asked to feel them. It just means you are a person.”

“Oh. Yes. I guess I did say that, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Charles smiled and kissed her forehead once again. “I just want to make sure you remember, since you are my favorite person.”

Eventually, Charles nodded off, the day’s events behind him (or so he believed). Delia wasn’t as fortunate. She listened to her husband’s heartbeat as her head rested on his chest, her fingers occasionally coming up to touch the malachite pendant she’d returned to her neck, willing its dreamlike properties to infuse into her skin like a tonic and drag her into a nightmare-free slumber.

And suddenly, like an answered prayer, they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Fair warning, shit is going DOWN next chapter when Barbara and Adam finally return from their mysterious mandatory Netherworld errand, we find out what Beetlejuice was *actually* up to all day with the Jockey, and the whole fam’s in one place again. 
> 
> Buckle up. And leave a comment if you like this…I’ve truthfully never finished a fic before (but I’m trying here!!) and your kindness really helps a lot.


	5. Barbara and Adam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Maidlands return, Beetlejuice raises hell, Barbara discovers something new about herself, and Adam gets really real about his darker past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is double the length for double the characters (I almost split Barbara & Adam into separate sections, but it didn’t make sense narratively and would’ve left y’all on a cliffhanger.) 
> 
> Buckle up, I warned you!

From the moment she woke up, Barbara had a bad feeling about today.

“Woke up” being kind of a relative term—as a ghost, neither she nor Adam really needed to snooze. But it still felt nice and cozy and routine, so most nights they did anyway, sometimes even having dreams like the strange one about a long red tongue that Barbara had last night. Sleep kept things interesting, but that one left her uneasy. 

It turned out her unnerving dream was a pretty good indicator of how the day would go, because even though Barbara and Adam had Saturday plans of restoring an antique shelf with Delia to hold her college psychology books (Beetlejuice broke the last one, naturally), it all went out the window with the sound of a crack and the form of a very green, very annoyed dead woman suddenly standing in the attic at the foot of their bed.

“WAHH,” both Maitlands tumbled out of bed and stood as they realized it really was Miss Argentina in front of them, who didn’t look phased in the slightest.

“You two will report to the Netherworld immediately,” she said, already turning to leave. “Come come.”

“Wait, what? What is happening?” Adam asked, turning to his wife. “Barbara?”

As if Barbara knew better. She loved her husband to pieces, but she didn’t have all the answers here, so she merely gave a bewildered shrug.

“There are reports of excess un-reg-is-tard supernatural activity in this house,” Miss Argentina said, cutting right to the chase. “We need to investigate and correctly document the source.”

Immediately, Barbara and Adam were nervous. Beetlejuice had been living in their house for months now, but they had no idea if anyone in the Netherworld knew.

They had (to their surprise) grown to love Beetlejuice, but they couldn’t exactly picture him dotting his Is and crossing his Ts on the necessary paperwork to formally disclose himself as a household demon. Shit.

They didn’t have much time to ponder. Miss Argentina was already waiting near the new gate to hell in their room, tapping her foot impatiently.

Adam poked his head downstairs to shout at a disappointed Delia that their shelf building would need to wait, and out the dark demon door they went.

If they weren’t so creeped out, they might’ve thought it was kinda nice having a change of scenery, for once. They had been cooped up inside for so long. (Barbara fully cried the month before when they realized they could safely step a little bit into the garden, that’s how deprived she felt.) But the Netherworld was as dark and ugly as ever, and they followed Miss Argentina to a depressing-looking waiting room.

“Could this really be because of…Beetlejuice?” Adam whispered, attempting to be subtle.

Turns out Miss Argentina’s hearing was better than they gave her credit for.

“No no no no. Lawrence registered with the Demonic Haunting Department ages ago,” Argentina answered. “His paperwork is filed. He’s been clear and around for seven months.”

“…Six months,” Adam said at the exact same time.

An uncomfortable pause hung in the air over the discrepancy.

“I’m sorry, did you say SEVEN months?” Barbara interjected.

“Yes, you know, it’s been seven months since Lawrence rejoined your household.”

Barbara and Adam looked at each other, confused. By their calculations, Beetlejuice had only around for _six_ months. Had he…snuck back in earlier than they thought? Was THAT why Delia and Lydia became obsessed with green outfits, green vape pens, green everything in the month before his arrival?

It did make sense. The two of them seemed wholly unfazed when Beetlejuice made his grand return and were more than willing to help him butter the rest of them up.

But Barbara and Adam had bigger fish to fry, so this had to wait. One crisis at a time. 

“Alright,” Miss Argentina spoke as they took seats in the waiting room. “You will wait here until we call you.”

With a heavy sigh, Barbara and Adam complied.

And they sat. And sat and sat and sat, begging someone to call them up because even a Maitland could only be so patient. Barbara briefly wondered whether they’d get back in five minutes or five years. She sincerely hoped it was the former.

They sat in the waiting room, counting the excess heads on the Recently Deceased who surrounded them and wondering what this “excess unregistered supernatural activity” could possibly be, bored out of their minds.

And that’s when the crash happened.

As the waiting room clock ticked by at a glacial pace, a sharp loud crack thundered through the room, shaking everyone’s chairs. Everyone froze.

“What in the—“ Adam didn’t get to finish his sentence because suddenly, black and green sparks started flying like fireworks above everyone’s heads.

“COWABUNGAAAAAAAAA,” a young voice screamed, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What is happening??” Adam asked, panicked.

“MOVE OVER MOTHAFUCKAHSSSSSS.”

Now _that_ voice they recognized. Beetlejuice. What was he doing in the Netherworld? This couldn’t be good.

Beetlejuice and the Jockey slammed face-first into the backroom of the Recently Deceased waiting room, fully uprooting one of the walls, causing it to collapse back into plaster. It was a miracle Juno was long gone, for under her watch this would’ve spelled exorcism for every single one of them.

“WHAT ARE JOU DOING,” Argentina shouted, her accent thick with surprise. The fireworks that went off above everyone spiraled into red ribbons as little ghost rats started flooding out of the walls in droves.

Adam and Barbara jerked their feet off the floor and jumped up on their chairs to avoid the stampede, watching as the tiny ghost rats formed a conga line, knocking over every unused chair in sight. 

“Like it? Inspired by your Day-O!” Beetlejuice shouted their way as he jumped over the rats’ heads as if he were tap dancing, stopping right smack dab in front of a furious Miss Argentina.

“Argentina. Babe. My apologies. My condolences. My _sincerest_ and _complete_ regrets for this _ser-i-ous-ly_ bad luck! Like who would’ve thought—”

She saw right through it.

“You are trying to _distract_ me! BEGONE Lawrence!!”

Her tone shook Beetlejuice more than he expected.

He glanced over toward the Jockey, who was in the middle of raiding one of Argentina’s file cabinets as discreetly a blood red-faced Jockey who just blew up a wall could be discreet.

That had been the whole plan: the Jockey enlisted Beetlejuice’s help in causing chaos in the office so she could ultimately forge documents that allowed her to get into the Living World as easily as BJ could.

In exchange, the Jockey would owe Beetlejuice one big super enormous favor, redeemable at any time. The demon had instantly agreed, tempted by all the delicious anarchical possibilities of what this favor could be.

But of course, Beetlejuice was always a sucker for Argentina. And though he’d deny it left and right, he was also low-key afraid of her fiery heated side, which was on full display in front of him, the Jockey, Barbara, Adam, the entire waiting room, and God, for all they knew.

The Jockey had not taken this into account.

“Ah heh. Heh. Well Jockey, it’s been a pleasure,” Beetlejuice said, bowing low. “Guess distraction action’s over!”

And with a poof, Beetlejuice was gone; presumably back to the Deetz house. Barbara and Adam watched as an irritated Argentina turned to a positively _fuming_ Jockey. 

“He LIED!” the Jockey screeched as two bulky Netherworld skeletons apprehended her.

“Have you even met him? Of COURSE he lied, you fool!” Miss Argentina boomed in return.

“I thought I knew—!”

“YOU WERE WRONG!”

Miss Argentina’s shouts blended with the Jockey’s. But Barbara, unable to shake the foreboding feeling she’d felt all day, merely sat back in her flimsy plastic waiting room chair as they argued and the ghost rats retreated sheepishly. She was clearly the only one in the room not up for seeing the main show.

She closed her eyes.

Before Barbara really knew what was happening, she was imagining Delia struggling without grace up the house stairs, looking paler than she’d ever seen her. And before Barbara could ask herself why in the _world_ that came to mind, she imagined Delia’s eyes rolling back in her head as she fainted backwards, plunging down the steps like a rag doll, her neck making a sick crack as she hit the bottom.

“AHH!” Barbara jumped up as if a ghost rat bit her.

Adam turned, alarmed. “Barbara! What is it, are you okay??” He was immediately on his feet, right there with her. The waiting room’s attention turned, even Miss Argentina and the Jockey pausing their bickering to watch the Maitlands.

“We have to go home,” Barbara gasped, eyes wide with alarm. “I don’t know what happened, but I had this crazy thought about Delia and my feelings are all over the place and I just think we need to go home. Right now.”

Adam didn’t get it in the slightest, but he would follow Barbara and her intuition to the edge of the Netherworld, so he nodded with the conviction of a true partner. “Barbara I don’t—You know what, okay, I’m ready, let’s go.”

“WAIT,” Miss Argentina’s sharp voice froze them in their tracks, making even the Jockey flinch. “Where _exactly_ are the two of you going?”

Barbara was the one with nerve enough to answer. “I think something happened to someone in our family. I saw it and we need to go. Now.”

“You saw this?” Miss Argentina asked, surprised. “In a vision?”

“I mean, I guess? I don’t _know,_ but we need to leave right now.”

“You know, visions can happen in your kind. Maybe _that_ is the unusual energy registering from your house,” the beauty queen theorized. “Have you had others? Maybe dreams?”

“I did dream about a red tongue slide last night, but I don’t think—“

“Premonitions are rare in ghosts,” Miss Argentina interrupted again. “It’s a gift. It can help you see the hand dealt before the cards fall, but only for those who matter. Those you love.”

Barbara might’ve contemplated this more seriously, but all she could see in her head were Delia’s eyes fluttering shut as blood trickled out of a head wound, her neck twisted painfully.

She turned to Adam. “We need to go.”

Miss Argentina seemed placated enough to allow it. “I’ll get your paperwork in order and register you as a Ghost With Sight. Now leave so I can deal with _this one_ ,” she glared at the Jockey, who scowled back, equally steamed.

Relieved to get out of there, Barbara muttered a hurried thank you and goodbye, grabbing Adam’s hand to tug him toward the waiting room Exit sign.

It was very late when they finally popped back into the house’s kitchen, the rest of the household already in bed.

Adam wanted a moment to catch his breath (not that he had one), but Barbara insisted on blazing past the kitchen table where a bouquet of purple bellflowers sat undisturbed.

Zipping around the table, she accidentally smacked right into a stack of Delia’s college course psychology books, sending them tumbling to the floor for the fifth or sixth time that week. (Poor psych books.)

For once, Barbara didn’t care about the mess. She flew like a bat out of hell to the staircase, Adam on her tail, and when she finally saw the steps, her whole body shuddered with relief to see that they were empty and not housing Delia’s body.

“Barbara, what—,“ Adam tried.

“DELIA?” Barbara called out, sprinting up the steps two at a time. She turned on her heel towards the Deetz bedroom and that’s when she almost ran nose to nose into Charles. It was a lot like how Beetlejuice ran into Lydia earlier that same day, in that same hallway.

“Quiet!” Charles boomed, his stern voice contrasting the boxers, robe, and fuzzy bunny slippers he wore as he exited the bedroom. “I heard shouting and books falling. This noise must stop.”

“What on Earth is going on?” Adam asked as he reached them, wheezing from trying to keep up with everything unfolding so rapidly. “What is _happening_?” The poor ghost had done his very best to match Barbara’s pace, but in all fairness it was A LOT, even for their house.

“Delia isn’t feeling well at the moment,” Charles offered up as an explanation. “She was walking up the stairs and—“

“Did she fall down the stairs??” Barbara all but shouted, completely oblivious to her uncharacteristic interruption. “I had a weird daydream—vision? Something!—of her falling down the stairs. Charles, is she okay?”

Charles’ face paled slightly. Adam looked even more baffled, if that was possible.

“She almost did fall,” Charles said quietly. “Lydia stopped her. It sounds like she had a panic attack.”

He paused a moment, recalling the day he begged the Maitlands to share the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ , to see if it’d help Delia. He had not told them the full story, but he said enough for them to get the picture. He was hoping to do the same now.

“It, uh. It had to do with her ex,” he admitted as their eyes widened with recognition.

“Hold up Chuck! What ex?” the suspiciously green, black, and white-shaded lamp on the table right next to the Deetz bedroom spoke up, and that’s when they all realized Beetlejuice had been listening in on their conversation as he transformed back into himself.

“Who the fucking _fuck_ is her ex?”

“He is—she was—um,” Charles grasped at straws with how to placate the demon as Lydia exited her room, rubbing sleep from her eyes to see what all the commotion was about.

The Maitlands ignored them, Barbara turning to Adam. “I’m going to check on her, okay Adam? Even if she’s sleeping, I just need to see for myself that she’s....” Barbara was going to say “breathing” but that felt morbid, so she stopped herself. She also wanted to check that Delia’s neck wasn’t twisted into a nightmarish spinal contortion, though she stopped herself from saying that too. 

Adam, on the other hand, stayed quiet, mulling everything over in his head, twisting and turning each piece until the puzzle started to look gut-wrenchingly familiar. He had a good hunch about what really happened to Delia. He dreaded it.

“Okay Barbara. I’ll be downstairs, alright?” he said to his wife, who gave him a hug before he discharged himself from the chaos. He had a feeling he should be waiting downstairs for something else entirely, and frankly, trying to out-shout the three other members of his family currently yelling in the hallway was just not appealing.

Meanwhile, as Lydia questioned what the hell was happening and Charles fielded a rapid assault of questions from Beetlejuice, whose hair was blending from white to red to green and back again like a lava lamp (“Good ex or bad ex? Is this that Rome guy? Why is Darla having panic attacks over him? The fuck did he do?? And why the FUCK do I not know about it?”), Barbara went to find Delia. 

The bedroom door cracked open and Barbara tiptoed into the room.

“Delia?”

The stepmom was exhausted after her day and was the only family member out for the count, a wonder considering the hallway commotion. Her face was relaxed. She looked peaceful. That wasn’t quite enough for the ghost.

Barbara quietly approached the bed, looking over the sleeping woman. Gently, with maternal care, she put her cold fingers to Delia’s neck and felt the steady rhythm of a pulse. Delia’s neck felt soft and warm and definitely not broken, and Barbara deflated with abject relief, blinking back tears as she realized for the first time how terrified she had been.

She knew now it was only a vision, but still. The premonition had felt so real. And judging from what Charles told them, it almost was.

Even as she stared at Delia, alive and well and sleeping, Barbara’s skin danced with goose bumps and her stomach was in knots. She didn’t know Delia had panic attacks, and it took her back to a past she rarely thought about, long before she and Adam died. A past where they had tried to have a baby.

They wanted to be parents more than anything. And they tried really really hard. Barbara had even gotten pregnant once, to their absolute joy.

A miscarriage robbed them of all of it. 

“It’s not your fault,” Adam would whisper to her at night when he thought she was asleep, trying to convince her subconsciously since Awake Barbara wouldn’t hear it. “Barbara I promise, it’s not your fault.”

It took her a long time to believe that. They’d been thinking of adoption before dying, but first Barbara had buried her feelings under pottery and kombucha and Spanish lessons, until it caught up to her in the form of full-blown panic attack over the prospect of never having what she actually wanted.

She couldn’t have known how things would turn out. How Lydia would eventually enter their lives, not technically their daughter, but pretty damn close. And how it changed everything—for her and for Adam. For Charles and for Lydia. For Beetlejuice. And for Delia, too.

Barbara snapped out of her reminiscing at the thought of Delia, thankful the woman was lightly snoring and hadn’t caught her staring into space.

“I am so glad you’re okay,” she whispered emotionally, tucking a strand of Delia’s hair behind her ear.

Barbara hadn’t had many friends while she was living, and she got the sense that Delia was the same. She and Delia weren’t close at first, but being mostly trapped in the house together had worked wonders on their blossoming friendship.

Surprisingly, they had a lot in common. They could talk for hours about collaging and yoga and art. Barbara helped Delia get a handle on the wild backyard garden, and they both delighted in “mom-ing” Lydia whenever possible. Barbara had gotten more spiritual since becoming a haunt-happy ghost, and Delia grew to love baking her way through vegan cookbooks, so their likes and hobbies began to converge.

They’d become a kind of anchor for each other, something different outside their loving relationships. Yes, Barbara was very fond of the crystal lover, and the feeling had grown mutual.

Not wanting to wake Delia, Barbara carefully backed away, refilled her water glass (what was with this family and THAT much water was anyone’s guess), and exited smoothly with a kiss to Delia’s temple, though the sleeping woman was none the wiser.

Charles returned to the bedroom a while later after miraculously convincing Beetlejuice to hold off on the interrogation until Delia was awake to speak for herself, and suddenly it was like it always was.

But Delia’s sleep didn’t last very long.

Her slumber was surface level and at some point, she slipped out of dozing, unable to reenter. It was very early in the morning, but still dark outside. The house was quiet. She felt the weight of Charles’ protective arm around her waist, and Delia began to realize that being in bed for almost a full day wasn’t only strange but also vaguely unhealthy.

Her exhausted husband drooled next to her, and she turned to card her fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead slowly before making the choice to give up on sleep in favor of a stroll around the house instead.

As she crept carefully down the stairs (both hands on the railing just in case), Delia didn’t have much of a game plan. But once she hit the bottom and saw the fireplace, she let morbid curiosity take over.

Her phone was still left on the floor from when she had thrown it yesterday. The phone with messages and likes and comments from Viall, her direct line of connection to him.

Not one to resist temptation easily, Delia walked over to the fireplace and carefully picked it up, debating whether or not to peek at what was left on it. Viall was mid-comment spree when she chucked it away, so he might have more to say. But could she handle that? Did she want to even try? She wasn’t sure.

She had just resolved to turn the phone back on when the dark silhouette of a man’s shadow rose against the fireplace in front of her. It felt like all the blood in her body drained from her face into the floor at once, and she whipped around in horror.

“Adam!!” Delia shrieked with her hands over her mouth, dropping the phone again. It flew out of her hand and ultimately cracked against the fireplace.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he said, palms up, surprise and guilt written all over his face.

“You frigh-tened me,” Delia said, moving a hand over her heart.

“I’m sorry, oh gosh I’m so sorry Delia,” the ghost said, dismayed.

Delia caught her breath and her eyes fluttered shut. “What—what are you _doing_?”

“I was on the couch, resting,” he quickly explained. “I thought you were asleep upstairs.” He had been lying on the couch in front of the fireplace and only rose when he realized he had company. He truly hadn’t meant to scare her. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“I asked, are you okay? Barbara and I heard that, well, something happened. We were worried about you.”

She nodded and gave a stiff smile, but neither of them really believed it.

He suddenly noticed the cracked phone on the ground. “What are _you_ doing up?”

“I—I was getting my phone,” she said sheepishly, knowing exactly how suspicious she sounded. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Adam nodded and looked sad, and his eyes darted to the malachite necklace she wore.

“It does work sometimes. To keep unhappiness away,” Delia said, answering a question he hadn’t asked. “Malachite has healing properties. Good for balance and clarity. And warding off nightmares.”

She knew Adam already knew this.

“When you gave this necklace to me for Christ-mas,” Delia continued, rolling her fingers over the newly-fixed pendant at her neck. “Did _you_ know it warded off bad dreams? I always wondered. Is that why you gave it to me?”

“Yes. I hoped it would work, at least,” Adam said. “You told me you were having nightmares. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how and there was nothing in the _Handbook_ or any of your college psychology books, and—”

“You read my psychology books?”

Adam nodded shyly. “I wanted to help,” he repeated.

“Wow,” Delia was touched. “Thank you.”

She couldn’t remember anyone gifting her a crystal before. It was always the other way around, and it meant a lot to her, even if it didn’t spook away all her night terrors like Adam had hoped.

“I wish it helped you always,” he said.

She smiled a tired smile. “Me too Adam. Me too.”

They stayed in comfortable silence for a while, Delia not moving to fill it, for once.

“Charles said…he said what happened had to do with your ex,” Adam said, sitting on the couch. Delia stiffened. She mentally prepared herself to answer an onslaught of questions.

Instead, Adam surprised her.

“I had a bad ex once,” he admitted, eyes downcast. _That_ definitely wasn’t what Delia expected to hear. Adam was compassionate. Adam was responsible. Adam wasn’t a dating fuck up like she was once…right?

Delia moved to sit next to him, eyes inviting him to continue if he wished.

“He was a few grades ahead of me in school. Handsome, tall. We met as teenagers. He was a little older, a little cooler, and a _lot_ more confident. I liked him right away.”

“I hadn’t known you dated men,” Delia mused, surprised to find that fluidity was another thing she and Adam had in common.

“I did. But he was different from anyone else, and not in a good way. Folks tried to warn me, but I couldn’t see how much he took over my life and cut me off from everyone until it already happened.”

“He was controlling?”

“He was abusive,” Adam said bluntly with the quiet control and clarity that comes with speaking the truth.

“Oh Adam,” Delia started to tear up and touched his shoulder comfortingly. “I am so sorry.”

“Me too.” Adam said. “You know, for a long time I blamed myself. Even had a panic attack once over it. It took years of unlearning things for me to realize that some monsters are monsters because they can trick you into believing it’s you and not them. Barbara helped a lot with that.”

“She’s a wise one, our Barbara.”

“She is,” he smiled. “She’s taught me a lot about life. And death. What’s okay, what’s not okay. But I think the most important thing I’ve learned from her is that we don’t have to carry our pain alone. When you ignore your pain, you’re only numbing yourself until it gets worse. You have to stand up for your right to feel your own pain.”

He looked at her pointedly, and they both knew they weren’t just talking about him anymore.

Delia had never actually told anyone but Charles about what Viall did to her. It was clear Barbara and Adam suspected—she was sure Charles probably had something to do with that—but hearing Adam open up so honestly about his own abuse made Delia want to lighten her own baggage more than she’d allowed.

So she did.

“My ex. He, um” Delia began, taking a deep breath in. “He really—he hurt me.” She’d never said it out loud to anyone but her husband. It somehow made her sick to her stomach and made her heart race, as if saying it would summon Viall into the room like Lydia had once done with Beetlejuice.

Adam took note of that and moved his hand close to hers in case she wanted the comfort, and she immediately closed the distance and gripped it tightly.

The gesture reminded Delia of earlier when the same considerate hand hold thing was done by Beetlejuice, who also warmed her heart at that moment since he was not-so-subtly pretending to be a green, black, and white painting in the living room corner, unbeknownst to Adam.

(They very much did not own this painting, which featured a rock star that looked like Beetlejuice on a sandworm eating a monster truck. But it was a nice try on his part.)

She was astonished the demon hadn’t interrupted her confession to Adam, who was gently rubbing his thumb over her shaky hand. She loved them both more for it.

“It’s not your fault,” Adam said, looking directly into her eyes. “It is not your fault. I am so sorry someone chose to hurt you. You deserve so much better.”

“He started following me on Instagram today,” Delia said, meeting Adam’s worried face.

“What do you want to do?”

“I think,” Delia said. “I suppose…I think I should block him.”

“I think that’s a great idea.”

“Could you…could you help?” she asked in a small voice.

Adam smiled and nodded, instantly by her side, scrolling through her app. He didn’t usually join Delia on her Instagram binges, but he made a mental note to try and show interest more often, if only to ward off her triggers.

Viall’s profile popped up, showing a picture of a smarmy man with shell-white teeth and slicked back hair that reeked of phoniness. He looked just like Adam thought he would. 

Delia’s hand shook over his profile icon. Adam noticed.

“We’ve got this,” he said. “Together.”

They joined hands and together, and with one final look, Viall was blocked.

Delia breathed a sigh of relief, throwing herself back against the couch pillows. “I need an e-cigarette.”

“How about a hug instead?” Barbara interrupted from the stairs as she descended.

The ghost smiled as she crossed the living room and crushed Delia in a tight hug.

“I was so worried,” she said. “You’re really okay, right? Right?”

Delia melted into her arms, nuzzling her head into Barbara’s. “Yeah I’m okay.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t here,” Barbara said. Adam joined them with one hand on Barbara’s shoulder and the other on Delia’s.

“That’s alright. You couldn’t have known,” Delia said. “Is everything alright in the Netherworld? I can’t remember you going back before…”

“Everything’s fine,” Barbara promised. “But about the ‘couldn’t have known’ thing…”

“Someone’s just got a new superpower, that’s all,” Adam said with unconcealed pride in his wife. “It was pinging weirdly in the Netherworld, so they needed to register it.”

“Really?”

“I have these visions now,” Barbara said. “Where I can see things before they happen. But not everything I see happens.”

“Oh!” Delia gasped in surprise. “Like ESPN!”

They knew what she meant. “Something like that. We came back from the Netherworld because I saw you in one of them.”

Delia’s smile faltered. Oh God, had Barbara seen what she and Charles got up to? Her face flushed.

“I didn’t see anything too intimate,” Barbara clarified. Obviously she (and the whole house) knew how…intense Charles and Delia could get, but they had zero desire to know any more. “I promise. But I did see you on the stairs. And…you fell.”

Delia looked surprised.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that it was wrong,” Barbara said.

“Me too.”

“A green woman named Miss Argentina told me the visions can help me see how things might turn out, but only for those who matter,” Barbara said. “I guess it must just be for the people I love.”

Delia’s head snapped up at that, a real, albeit brittle, smile spreading. “Yeah?”

Adam’s heart broke a little at the amazement in her voice. “Well yeah, Delia. Of course.”

“We’re a family,” Barbara added.

After speaking quietly for a while about nothing and everything, they noticed the sun begin to rise outside. The trio resolved to rest a bit before Lydia woke up, Adam and Barbara all but carrying Delia up the stairs out of caution.

Barbara gave her a hug at the Deetz bedroom door. It made Delia feel like she was a kid being dropped off at school, and while that would normally aggravate her, this time she found it kind of soothing. Clearly she was more tired than she realized.

“Call us if you need anything, okay?” Barbara said.

“I will.”

“And Delia?” She turned at the sound of Adam’s voice.

“If you ever want to talk…I’m here.”

She smiled, heartened by his invitation.

As Delia snuggled back into Charles’ strong embrace and birds started chirping outside with the sunrise, her heart rate calmed. She felt like the luckiest woman alive. And for the first time all day, she finally, actually, really and truly rested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: You know the saying that’s like "if you introduce a gun in a story, eventually you’ve gotta fire it"? Consider Viall the gun. (Sorry Delia.) Get ready to meet him in the finale chapter, because everyone’s together and IT. IS. ON.
> 
> Leave a comment if you’re feeling this. I’m hoping this’ll be my first finished fic ever! :O


	6. Viall et al.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delia’s abusive ex-boyfriend Viall shows up at the house. Complete chaos ensues. It's finale time, here we go! 
> 
> EXTRA TRIGGER WARNING for extremely abusive language/memories (in italics) when Delia and Viall meet face to face. Please avoid if you’re on the fence about reading it, I care about ya bb.

Delia felt stronger and healthier than she had ever felt in her _life_ , including both her stint in a peace-loving monastery and that time she did a bunch of shrooms in Finland and saw God. Her head was clear. Her nightmares retreated. And the scary “inci-dant” she didn’t really want to talk about only made her closer to her family. Yes, she felt much, much better.

But convincing the family she WAS better? Next to impossible.

Since that horrible day when Viall briefly popped into the picture, there had been a few events that both warmed Delia’s heart and made her eyes roll far back in her head. 

On the plus side, Charles absolutely refused to leave the house (or even leave her company) without kissing her (“It was an OMEN,” he once said, referring to how they didn’t part properly on That Morning).

One time it even meant he called out of work entirely when a kiss goodbye led to much more intimate things, and they decided they simply couldn’t keep their hands off each other for a single second that day. Delia could hardly complain about that. Charles was, after all, a ravenous lover.

On the minus side though, one time Charles tried to literally pad the stairs with soft foam and a landing mat, as if she were a toddler (“What would you say if I told you these stairs were now safe for the whole family?” he tried to sell her on it, with no luck). She yelled at him for it, feeling patronized, but she couldn’t help but think it was a tiny bit cute once he sheepishly packed it all up.

Also, it wasn’t like Charles was the only one soooooo obsessed with the stairs now. Any time Delia made a move to walk up or down them, no matter the hour of day or night, a Maitland just *happened* to be going the same way.

“Oh hey! Looks like we’re walking up together!” Barbara would say brightly, looping her arm through Delia’s.

“Well what do ya know, stair buddies!” Adam would quip, side hugging her as they descended.

It was cute and obnoxious and extremely obvious and extremely _them_ , though they each played dumb when she brought up time and time again that she did not want or need a stair escort.

Despite that, she stopped complaining when she noticed that Lydia’s anxiety about the stairs in general disappeared when the Maitlands played stair cops. Anything that comforted Lydia was a good thing in her book, so she sucked it up, even if she hated being treated so fragile. 

She wished they’d see her progress. After all, she started a new spiritually nourishing practice called “Canadian insect meditation,” spent a ludicrous amount of money on new healing crystals (Charles’ eyes popped out at the price tag, but he wisely said nothing), she got a new orange vape pen, she felt one with the universe again, and she even spread fresh new sage on the steps, which Lydia openly gagged at. Yes, she was definitely feeling more like herself again. What more could anyone ask for? Honestly. 

Lydia and Beetlejuice were by far the hardest of the household to placate though; especially since they had an insatiable appetite for information at all costs once the demon heard an ex-boyfriend who hurt Delia was somehow involved in the picture.

After straight weeks of pestering and sleuthing and causing detective-related anarchy that involved re-burning Delia’s new psych book shelf (poor psych books), she finally cracked and sat them both down on the couch for a condensed version of the story, predicated on the promise they do NOTHING to Viall.

It was the quietest she had ever seen them, and that worried her tremendously, especially when she saw Lydia blink back tears.

But the result was what she’d hoped for. They stopped the pestering, and Lydia even started giving her full-body hugs with regularity, which Delia basked in like sunshine…even when she could tell the teen was noticeably listening to her heartbeat and checking if she was shaky that day.

(On one day when Delia had too much coffee and felt jittery, Lydia’s eyes went wide during their hug. She disappeared and came back with Beetlejuice, and they all but tied Delia to the family couch where they could keep an eye on her for the rest of the day.)

If she were being honest, Delia did have a hunch the two were discretely plotting some kind of war plan that both (1) punished the man who hurt her and (2) fit into Delia’s painstakingly specific “Do Not Maim Viall” parameters. They were creative though. She knew as hard as she tried, they would probably end up attempting _something_. And she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a teeny tiny bit curious about what that might be, though she wasn’t candid enough with herself to admit that.

Despite these minor changes in Delia’s life, things were looking pretty close to “normal” again in the Deetz house.

And then, on an unassuming, bleak and rainy day, the doorbell rang.

Adam had gotten into the habit of answering, once he figured out how to make himself corporal for small stretches of time. It made him feel more normal. More human. And it was always nice to talk to someone outside the house, as much as he loved his family.

But when he answered and came face to face with a smug, punch-able person he recognized once upon a time from Instagram, he knew right away who it was. Adam’s heart shot into his throat and he openly gawked.

Viall, Delia’s abusive ex, was standing on their doorstep.

“Hey,” Viall said. “S’Delia around?”

Adam wanted to kill him. Adam wanted to kill him right then and there and tell no one and move forward with his peaceful death. But even though he theoretically _could_ , he knew he wouldn’t. Sure, Delia only made Lydia and Beetlejuice promise not to murder Viall, but Adam knew the sentiment extended to everyone.

He surprised himself by realizing he could easily murder him _for_ her, yes. But he couldn’t do this—this taking the choice out of her hands— _to_ her. Damn Viall. Damn him to hell. He didn’t deserve Delia’s kindness.

“Uh. Dude?”

Adam realized he had been staring blankly at Viall until his thoughts were interrupted.

“Oh! Uh,” he had no idea where to go with this, so he settled on the obliviously obvious. Not a bad default. “Can I, can I help you?”

“Yeah, you can. Looking for Delia. You seen her?” Viall peered around his shoulder intrusively. Adam thought it was very lucky for Viall that he answered the door and not Charles, who would’ve just strangled him.

“Ah. Delia. Yes, yes….Uh. Just! Just wait here.”

Adam shut the door quickly, thoughts spiraling, and he came face to face with Barbara, who looked as outraged as he felt. Of course she was the perceptive enough to notice who was in their doorway. Of course.

“Is _that_ who I think it is?” her voice was an octave higher than normal.

“Yes,” Adam confirmed, equally stunned himself. What kind of monster was Viall to show up so aloofly after what he did?

It was a nightmare, but the one sole blessing of the whole thing was also the biggest, and that was that Delia had absolutely no fucking idea Viall was at their house.

“Okay. Oh gosh. Okay okay okay,” Adam sputtered, giving himself a gentle mental reminder to breathe. “We need a game plan.”

“I can help with that!” Lydia said. The ghosts jumped, not realizing she was in the room. They should’ve guessed she would _also_ be hyper-perceptive enough to figure everything out quickly.

“Lydia!” Barbara exclaimed.

“You don’t need to—we can take care of—“ Adam tried.

“Oh believe me, I am ready for this,” the teen said with such lethal conviction that the two immediately dropped it.

“Should…we call Charles?” Barbara asked hesitantly, even though all three of them knew the answer was no.

He was in his bedroom with Delia upstairs, probably getting cozy in a way none of them wanted to know about. Plus, Charles would unquestionably default to murder.

(Barbara still remembered the agonized look on his face when he came up asking for help from the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ all those months ago in the hopes of ending Delia’s nightmares. All they managed to get out of him was that “an ex hurt her” but she and Adam knew even then that it was bad. Very bad.)

They resolved to leave Charles out of it.

“Beetlejuice and I have been preparing for this for weeks,” Lydia said. “Trust me.”

And with that, Beetlejuice and Lydia’s cryptic plan was a GO. (With Maitland supervision!! And maybe without Beej, because they worried he might also default right to murder.)

They ran upstairs to the attic quickly, locking the door behind them. But before they could talk strategy, they were interrupted.

“Whaddup nerds?” Beetlejuice floated through the ceiling, holding a giant Slurpee-like cup of iced tea, pinky up. Noticing the surprise on Barbara, Lydia, and Adam’s faces, he narrowed his eyes.

“What?”

They couldn’t tell him that Viall was chilling on the doorstep. They just couldn’t. It’d be a death sentence for the man, and even if they all agreed Viall deserved it, they wanted to follow Delia’s wish not to kill him in her name. It was her choice to make. They may not have agreed, but they respected it.

But they all waited a beat too long to answer Beetlejuice, heightening suspicions.

“Nothing!” Barbara lied, too little too late.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” the demon bit back.

Knowing time was limited before Beetlejuice put it all together and impaled Viall through the eyes with his giant blue iced tea straw, Barbara came up with an idea.

“Just…reading!” She discreetly picked up the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ , making sure not to show Beetlejuice its title while thumbing through it quickly until she landed on the page she was looking for. Reading the thing backwards and forwards with Adam and Charles really came in handy.

More silence filled the room as Beetlejuice looked at them expectantly.

“I’m sorry, am I invisible again? Is this a prank? Is this a fucking puppet show joke to you people??” Beetlejuice said, highly annoyed. “Why are you all IGNORING me?? WHAT. IS. HAPPENING??”

As he tantrumed, he happened to move his head toward the window and saw a man smoking a blunt on the front porch.

“YOU ARE ALL BEING SUCH—wait, who the hell is that?” he asked, distracted.

Lydia felt a little bad for the demon. After all, was it _really_ his fault he was chaotically and violently protective of his family? She kinda saw it as a positive. So with Barbara posed to deal with Beetlejuice, Lydia opted for honesty.

“Beetlejuice, that is Viall. He is Delia’s ex.”

The demon’s eyes grew comically wide. “Her EX? THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL DOING? LET’S FUCKING KILL HIM!!!!”

Immediately his hair turned redder than any of them had ever seen it, and he moved to jump out the attic window. If he hadn’t been so blinded by fury though, he might’ve noticed Barbara quietly chanting an incantation in the corner.

If the room had been in slow-motion, it’d look something like this: Beetlejuice blazed in anger, eyes locked on his target; Lydia’s brow creased in concern as she worried whether she sealed Viall’s death sentence by letting the cat out of the bag early; and simultaneously, a small purple portal slowly began to open behind Beetlejuice.

Just as Beetlejuice was about to catapult himself out the window, his limbs started moving as if he were running through water, slowing down until they were fully frozen in place.

He realized Barbara had the _Handbook_. That was not good for him.

“I swear to SATAN if you Houdini’d me just now!!” Beetlejuice complained, wiggling his toes in frustration.

He was still unaware of the portal growing behind him in earnest, until Barbara, Adam, and Lydia stepped back to put distance between them.

Beetlejuice finally looked over his shoulder and saw the purple portal behind him at the _exact_ moment the head and shoulders of a very pissed off Netherworld Jockey began to emerge.

“Oh SHIT,” Beetlejuice yelled, squirming his limbs around, trying and failing escape his invisible confines. “You fooled me with revenge!!!”

“NEVER! TRUST A DEMON! IN A NICE SUIT!!!!” the Jockey shrieked.

A second portal opened up behind Beetlejuice and the Jockey threw herself at the demon, both of them tumbling through the vortex as Beetlejuice’s cry of “ASSHOLESSSSSSssssssssss” grew quieter and more distant.

Both portals shut with a dramatic pop.

“Well. That was effective,” Adam said, breaking the silence.

“He’s gonna be so pissed,” Lydia quipped.

“We’ll deal with it later,” Barbara said. “For all we know, he’ll just be happy the Jockey called his suit nice.”

Lydia would normally die laughing at Beetlejuice’s wholesome misfortune—it was one of her favorite things, truly—but she was too worried. She and Delia had really bonded in the year after her trip to the Netherworld, and Viall was a threat.

Today felt like a world away from when Lydia was so upset by her Dad moving on that she almost threw herself off a roof.

Now she and Delia were actually, cautiously close. Yeah, she was still a pain sometimes, but her stepmom introduced her to crystals and witchy stuff, and Lydia couldn’t imagine her life without Delia’s kooky, weird, yet unwavering love. She didn’t want to try, either.

They’d worked hard, Delia finally listening before sputtering pseudoscience, and Lydia taking the olive branches she was given, like the dark room Delia made good on. Their outlooks were still polar opposites, but at some point (and Lydia didn’t know _when_ though she’d spent many nights pondering it), that started to be glue that bound them as fellow weirdos, instead of a magnetic force that once repelled them. Lydia loved it. Lydia loved her.

She couldn’t and wouldn’t lose Delia to some jerk, not now. Not when she had worked so hard— _they_ had worked so hard—to build bridges. Come hell or high water, Lydia would keep her home safe. And there was no “home” for her without Delia in it.

“Okay what’s the plan?” Barbara asked.

At that, Lydia pulled out a thick, heavily bound book of papers.

“We have several,” she explained. “Let’s pick a poison, shall we?”

“How long did you spend on this?” Adam marveled at the textbook-thick volume in front of them.

“Long enough,” Lydia said simply. “I demand options.”

And options they had.

Among the many many many many many many MANY plans Lydia and Beetlejuice concocted, Barbara and Adam considered the following:

Plan 52: Enlist Sandy the Sandworm to chew Viall like a dog toy, and then pour battery acid in his eyes.

“How does this meet the ‘do not mutilate Viall’ rule?” Barbara asked.

“It doesn’t. But we were mad,” Lydia answered. “Let’s keep going.”

Plan 511: Tattoo expletives on Viall’s forehead, then call around to police stations to put the word out about a dangerous man with those exact tattoos.

“It’s not _technically_ hurting him. Physically, at least,” Lydia said. “But we can do better.”

Plan 390, option B: Ruin his reputation with phony Facebook community board posts about him causing pandemonium, and then recruit some Netherworld Recently Deceased to haunt him until he doubts his own sanity.

“What was Plan 390 option A?” Adam asked, in awe of the intricate, spidery letters that spelled doom for Viall in a hundred different ways.

“It involved less Facebook and more guillotine, but was basically the same otherwise,” Lydia said.

They kept at it, flipping through options until, like fate, their eyes landed on the same page at the same time, as if drawn there by the cosmic forces Delia was always chattering about. The perfect revenge. Plan 723.

“Wow. That’s some plan,” Adam said.

“We can definitely make this work,” Barbara approved.

“Yeah! We can head to the basement right now,” Adam said.

Lydia smiled. “Let’s do this.”

Meanwhile, on the second floor, the elder Deetzes remained blissfully ignorant of the tempo change in the house. Well…one of them did anyway.

“The atmosphere is changing,” Delia said unexpectedly and breathlessly, making Charles stop the trail of kisses and hickeys he was leaving on her bare chest.

“What?”

“The at-mos-phere is changing in here,” Delia said, suddenly distracted, sitting up and pushing Charles back a bit. “There’s very strange energy.”

Charles sighed. Having a spiritually in-tune wife had more perks than drawbacks, but sex-related interruptions did sometimes come with the territory of being married to Delia. She used to be pretty off in her assessments, but lately, she was scarily accurate. He usually listened to her either way.

When nothing happened after a moment, they started to dive back in again. He had just removed his shirt when they heard a loud thump in the hallway, Charles pausing with a sigh as Delia knowingly smirked with the knowledge she was right once again.

“I’ll see what’s happening,” Charles acquiesced with a groan.

He expected to see Beetlejuice causing turmoil (or doing something to Delia’s psych books _yet again_ ), but instead he saw Lydia coming down from the attic stairs with an antique bow and arrow in her hands (a leftover from one of the Maitlands’ many pre-death phases).

They locked eyes, Charles raising an eyebrow in question.

Lydia was wide-eyed for a second before schooling her expression. She was Lydia Fucking Deetz. If she wanted to carry a bow and arrow, she could carry a bow and arrow without answering for it. She had this.

Instead of launching into an explanation, Lydia merely looked him up and down, and Charles became suddenly and embarrassingly aware that his own neck was bright red with a slew of brand-new love bites.

Knowing he was just as caught as she was, he opted for a truce.

“Uh. Lydia,” he said to his daughter. “Whatever you’re up to…just…be safe.”

Charles couldn’t possibly know how relevant his warning was, but Lydia still appreciated it.

“You can trust me Dad.”

“You know what, Lydia. I do,” he said quickly and easily. “I really do.”

To prove it, he closed the bedroom door with one last wink to his daughter, returning to Delia. Lydia was left in the hallway smiling softly as she moved to get on the roof for phase two of the plan. She and her dad really had come a long way.

At that, Lydia fled to the roof, and Adam and Barbara got into place in the basement. It was show time. 

Out on the porch, unaware of anything inside (or anything in general, really), Viall had just finished his blunt. He was beginning to get crabby. “The fuck is taking so long?” he said to himself, trying the door handle to see if he could let himself in. Locked. Damn.

He was just about to leave and start peering in windows or searching for an emergency key to take, when the door swung back open by itself with a creak. 

“Heh,” Viall smirked. “Guess I forced it. Still got it.”

He walked into the very dark house. Weren’t there lights on when that nerdy guy answered? Whatever, he didn’t really care.

“Deliooooo?” he shouted. “Duh duh Delia? Dummy dummy dumb-ster? Where you at?”

The house was silent.

Viall sighed dramatically, taking a closer look around. This place looked pretty nice. Delia must’ve married rich, Viall thought. All the better opportunity for him.

Though he didn’t know it, Viall’s voice put the next phase of Lydia, Barbara, and Adam’s scheme into motion: mimicking Delia’s unique speech to lure Viall away. The plan was ON.

“Viall! Oh Viall!” Barbara put on her best fake Delia voice from downstairs. “I’m in the basement! Come here!”

“Yeah yeah,” he called down. But unbeknownst to Barbara and Adam, Viall’s eyes were on the upstairs hallway.

Maybe he could make a quick run and see if there was anything he could swipe, to make the trip out _really_ worth it. The house looked fancy enough, with furniture and paintings and shit. And the “universe” would probably just tell dumb dumb Delia she didn’t need whatever he took anyway, Viall thought to himself.

“Be righhtttt downstairs,” he lied as he started walking upstairs instead. Those psych books lying around looked expensive. Maybe he could flip them for profit.

As he made his way to the top floor and stood in the hallway, considering how much the upstairs table vase might sell for, the Deetz bedroom door opened.

And none other than Delia emerged, by herself, only in a robe.

Without a single solitary doubt, this was the absolute worst moment of Delia’s entire life. Bar none. She couldn’t even gasp in shock; her body so betrayed her in miserable disbelief. Delia’s mouth hung open at the sight of Viall, and she wondered briefly if she accidentally vaped some kind of drug that induced hallucinations. She felt herself stop breathing.

“Oh h-hey babe,” Viall said, shooting her a fake smile, slamming the vase back down as if he weren’t about to steal it. “This house was fucking hard to find, but I came, so you owe me. I came just for you.”

He looked her up and down shamelessly, not even having the decency to look abashed when he stopped and stared right at her chest.

Delia was a world away though. The cold jolt of leaving her safe bedroom and coming face-to-face with her literal tormentor spun her fervid thoughts into overdrive, and all she could hear was Viall’s voice in her ear, years ago.

_“Delia you know nobody likes you right? You’re lucky to have me around,” “Delia look, you should be grateful someone who looks like me wants to have sex with someone who looks like you, so just hold still,” “Delia your parents don’t call because they’re trying to get away from you,” “Delia, are you done crying yet? You should be happy I’m here. I hope you know everyone else just puts up with you,” “This is what you get for being a slut, Delia,” “Delia, let’s be real, you’re not amounting to anything important,” “Delia, we’re getting rid of the cat. Be honest, you only keep it alive so you can pretend someone actually gives a shit about you,” “Delia, you made me do this, you made me do this, why did you make me do this, you are so dumb to make me do this, you DESERVE THIS.”_

“Knock knock Delio, are you even listening? Do your ears even work? I CAME for you.”

Delia didn’t know how to process what was happening in front of her. She clutched the wall in support. She began to see dark spots. Was she going to faint?

“Get it, dummy? I _cameeee_ for you,” Viall said, licking his lips and making no attempt to hide the innuendo.

Delia threw up in her mouth a little bit, barely choking it down as she tried to regain control of her own body.

Viall bulldozed on, not taking Delia’s horrified look or silence into account at all. “Knew you’d be psyched to see me. Just like old times. C’mere…” he reached forward to grab her face in a hello kiss, and she backed up against the wall.

At the same time, Charles emerged from the bedroom.

“DELIA!” Charles shouted, completely shaken by the view in his hallway.

Her husband’s horrified voice shook Delia, and her incoming panic attack strangely and unusually paused.

It was as if she hit the eye of a storm, and she suddenly saw everything with perfect, almost supernatural clarity. The same kind of quiet control and clarity that comes with speaking the truth that she admired Adam for having and shamed herself for lacking felt suddenly accessible, the universe having her back for once.

“NO!” she shouted, voice deep and eyes blazing, stopping both Charles and Viall in their tracks. “ _No_. Get out of my house! You are, you are a _monster_!”

“Hey just shut up for a sec and I can explain,” Viall said, easily ignoring her distress. “Just. Get over here.”

He reached for her again at the same time that Charles lunged toward them with ferocity. But Delia surprised them both.

Instead of cowering from Viall or running into Charles’ arms, she surged forward toward her ex and dodged his hands, instead giving him a hard shove down the stairs.

Viall fell backwards like Delia almost had once, tumbling down gawkily, step by step, before he hit bottom with a wall-shaking thump.

The sound echoed off the ceiling and to the roof, alerting Lydia that something was amiss. Barbara and Adam were supposed to give the signal from the basement once they lured Viall down for a scare, so she could prepare to shoot things at him as he ran away. What was happening?

Upstairs, Delia’s face was white and she looked dumbfounded as she stared at Viall’s crumpled form below. Charles immediately wrapped his arms around Delia and picked her up off the ground, seizing her close and away from the stairs with trembling hands.

The whites of Charles’ eyes were huge with panic and dread and disbelief and even _tears_ , which he let run down his face with abandon. He had no words, only clutching Delia tightly to his side as if she could burrow into him and teleport away from this, away from Viall. He wished she could.

“You stupid fucking _bitch_ ,” Viall broke the moment, staggering to his feet at the bottom of the stairs, his nose bleeding profusely. Delia jumped at his voice, her bravery evaporating in favor of pure frozen fear. Charles pushed himself in front of her.

At the same time, Lydia poked her head into the foyer to see what was happening, and saw Viall speaking to Delia. “NO!” she said horrified. Viall turned to her briefly, but she sprinted away to the basement door, hurling it open. “Barbara, Adam, HELP!”

The ghosts apparated out of the basement where they had been lying in wait for Viall to take the bait. Immediately, their faces dropped.

Barbara grabbed Lydia’s shoulders to stop her from charging Viall herself, while Adam instantly materialized himself right beside Delia, clutching her trembling arm securely. 

“You broke my nose! You broke my fucking nose, you stupid cunt!” Viall shouted at Delia. He started tearing up the stairs toward them.

Adam heaved Delia behind himself while Charles started barreling down the stairs to meet Viall violently.

But to Charles’ dismay, he was beaten to the punch. Literally.

Before anyone could intervene or do more than scream, a purple portal began to appear right smack dab in the middle of the staircase, opening up like a hatch door. Charles stumbled back upstairs while he could.

“What the FUCK?” Viall shouted, stopped in his tracks mid-lunge. Out of the door slowly emerged the red-tinted costume of a _very_ angry Jockey from the Netherworld.

“Hello Deetz family,” the Jockey said menacingly.

Viall looked back up at Delia as if she would stop everything and explain to him what was happening, but the Jockey paid it no mind.

The Jockey smiled at the unfortunate human who happened to be right in front of her, and then opened her mouth disturbingly wide. Her tongue elongated past what was physically possible, down the stairs like a ruby red slide (much like the one in Barbara's dream, in fact). Viall fell backwards on his hands and feet, scrambling to get away. And then, without warning, the Jockey unleashed the ghost rats.

The same army of ghost rats who scurried across the Netherworld floor in distraction now poured right out of the Jockey’s mouth, cascading down the stairs like a rodent waterfall and right onto Viall. 

“HOLY SHIT! HOLY FUCKING SHIT! FUCKING FUCK!!!” Viall screamed in horror, trying and failing to fling the ghost rats off him. (They were dead so he obviously couldn’t, not that he knew that.)

The Jockey merely cackled, her eyes alive with delight.

“THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT,” Viall shouted, sprinting to the front door and out of the house. “TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT.”

The door slammed behind Viall, and the family saw him running to his car from the window.

“How’d you like THAT rat brain!” the Jockey shouted. But she wasn’t looking at the door Viall just exited.

She was looking up at the ceiling, right at Beetlejuice, who was hovering self-assuredly above the stairs, watching everything unfold.

“You mess with me, I mess with your family!” the Jockey said.

Clearly, the Jockey thought she was doing something that hurt Beetlejuice and his family with the whole rat display. Nobody had the heart to tell the Jockey that Viall was the furthest thing from “family” possible.

Well, except for Beetlejuice, who opened his mouth to smugly correct the Jockey before Barbara interrupted.

“Oh wow! Wow. You really did show us huh?”

“HE,” the Jockey said, pointing to Beetlejuice, who picked at his nails and couldn’t look less bothered, “Is the reason I got Netherworld community service! And I STILL can’t even get into the Land of the Living! All because of HIM.”

“Mm. Is that right?” Beetlejuice said.

“YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, PEA BRAIN.”

“Uh huh. Then tell me, Jockey, old pal, old friend. How’d ya get here?”

“WELL YOU,” the Jockey stopped in her tracks. That’s when she realized that in her furious pursuit of Beetlejuice, he had, in fact, cleverly showed her how to create portals to the Living World on her own. Just like he said he would.

The Jockey considered this.

“Fine. You got me in trouble, so you don’t get a favor. But we’re even,” the Jockey said, cutting her losses and disappearing back into the Netherworld through the door she drew in the stairs, a trail of ghost rats following her before it slammed entirely.

Delia felt like she was dreaming. She really couldn’t believe it. Barbara and Lydia joined her, Charles, and Adam at the top of the stairs, hugging each other tightly with raw open emotion that even Lydia didn’t pretend to be too cool for.

“Th-thank you. I love you all so much,” Delia sobbed, her voice quaking and full of sentiment, taking in comforting hugs coming from every direction. “And thank you, Beetlejuice, for—” Delia turned up to the ceiling to express her shaky gratitude.

But Beetlejuice was gone. He had other fish to fry first.

Outside in the parking lot, Viall couldn’t believe what a mess this booty call turned out to be. As he slammed his car door, he was enraged with how dumbass Delia fucked him over. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got, punching the steering wheel twice, face red with fury.

He’d just started fumbling with his keys when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw he was not alone.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a croaky voice asked from the backseat.

Viall froze and turned in his seat, locking eyes with none other than Beetlejuice, who was eerily calm and collected. In his hands, he held a neon green box. 

“What the fuck man?” Viall sputtered, still shaken from the feeling of ghost rats all over his body. “Get out of my ride!”

Beetlejuice didn’t say anything, just stared venomously at the car driver.

“Look maybe I should’ve called ahead or something. I get it, my B. Man to man here, honestly, I was just looking for some ass. D’s got like two brain cells but she’s bangin’.”

Silence.

“Plus she needed my help, honest!”

“Is that right?” Beetlejuice said, though he clearly wasn’t asking a question. His black nails tapped on the box, which seemed to shudder underneath his fingers.

“Yeah dude, that’s right. She’s weird. Needed my help to learn how to act. The guy fucking her in there should be thanking me. I showed her how to be a real wife!”

The silence in the car was deafening, and Beetlejuice tightened his hands on the box. A small and unobtrusive, yet powerful box. A real live _soul box_.

That’s when Viall noticed Beetlejuice’s hair had started literally flaming, which was hardly as unnerving as the matching blood red of Beetlejuice’s eyes.

“Holy HELL, what the fucking fuck ARE you??”

“I,” Beetlejuice said, clutching the soul box on his lap. “Am your worst nightmare.”

The soul box of ~~Otho’s~~ Kevin’s design was a flimsy, feeble fraud, much like its creator. The soul box of _Beetlejuice’s_ redesign was the stuff of nightmare fuel. Also an echo of its creator, if the demon did say so himself. (Which he did. Proudly and consistently. He even drew a picture of his soul box to brag about it, and Charles hung it up on the fridge.)

“What do you—“

Viall never got to finish his sentence.

Beetlejuice popped the top off the soul box, unleashing a thick tendril of green smoke that engulfed Viall until it dragged him, screaming, down into the depths of the box.

In reality, the demon only put Viall in the soul box for three human minutes. But in the box, time passed differently.

Viall emerged from the total solitude with torturous horror, feeling the effects of hundreds of years of isolation and fear. His eyes were open but they didn’t look like they were really _seeing_ anything anymore, something about him now very clearly, fundamentally, and irreversibly broken.

“If you ever come close to Delia and _my_ family, on Earth or in hell or on ‘Insta-grahm,’” Beetlejuice said, imitating Delia with air quotes.

“I won’t kill you. I promised her that. But chump change, I promise _you_ you’ll wish I did,” Beetlejuice said to the shaking crust of a human at the steering wheel. “Now fuck off. And don’t come back. Ever.”

With that, Beetlejuice went back inside to give his favorite crystal lover an actual, irony-free hug. (Though when it looked like Viall might not know how to even drive anymore since he stayed put, staring wide eyed at nothing, Beetlejuice used the _Handbook_ to poof Viall and his car far, far away.)

And that was the last time any of them ever heard of Viall again.

Life (and afterlife) slowly returned to a steady rhythm and fell into a comfortable groove for the whole family, with each of them appreciating the other even more after witnessing how they came together to protect and defend their tight-knit clan. Much like the Netherworld incident the year before, despite how scary the Viall mayhem was, it only served to bond them closer together.

Delia was particularly touched and proud of her family. She was also proud of herself for standing up to Viall, especially when his icons disappeared on social media altogether. 

“I really showed him!” she’d chirp happily, the rest of her family smiling fondly. 

Beetlejuice never said a word.

“I’m so proud of you, dearest,” Charles would say over and over again. As Delia and Charles lay together one night, after a lively evening of lovemaking, he softly told her he was proud once again and brushed her bangs off her sweaty, content face.

She cuddled in closer.

“Are you spiritually nourished?” he asked with a grin. He’d started asking her that to be cheeky, but kept at it when he figured out it yielded honest results.

Delia laid her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and thanking every star in the entire universe for letting her be lucky enough to find him and build a family. A real live family.

“I am,” she said. “I really am, Charles. I’m home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ACTUALLY FINISHED A FIC! Guys this has literally never happened before. I wasn’t sure I had it in me. :’) Thank YOU for being along for the ride. If you have any fic ideas (esp Delia ones), hit me up 'cause who knows when inspiration will strike again. 
> 
> If you wanna make my whole week, drop me a line with your fave part of this in the comments and we can geek out over Beetlejuice together. Grateful for you & your comments, now & always ☺


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